Saturday, March 25, 2006

Misuse of Holiday Spirit

Growing up it was standard practice for us to start decorating for Christmas the day after Thanksgiving.
It was also pretty standard that the Christmas decorations would come down on New Years Day.
It makes for a neat bookend on the holiday season when you observe these simple decor deadlines.

My in-laws, however, have no such deadline, apparently.
Today is March 25, a full three months after Christmas.
Their Christmas tree is still up and decorated.

I can't begin to tell you how much this horrifies me.
We might as well hang Easter eggs on the damn thing and call it an Easter tree. There are no indications that the tree is coming down anytime soon.
At what point does it cease to be decoration left up too long and become decorations put up too early?
I'm thinking June 25. That's the cutoff date. So if the tree becomes an Independence Day Tree, the equilibrium will have gone too far. If storefronts are advertising back to school sales, and the tree is still up, we may need to have an intervention.
If trick-or-treaters pick their bite-sized Snickers off the tree, we're talking about serious holiday cross-pollination violation.
This could get very serious.

2 comments:

eaf said...

Wow. When we took ours down the third week in January, I felt like a complete slacker. I don't feel so bad anymore.

We did leave our wreath on the front window for way too long. I kept forgetting it was there. You see it so much, it just blends right in.

Jessica said...

I still have my winter wreath up...but, it was just snowing last week, so that is OK. But a whole friggin decorated Christmas tree! At least it's a fake one!
I think you can get a pass for the whole month of January, seeing as how it is still wintry...but March??! Unacceptable!